With its new series of “N” chips Intel is reinventing its entry-level offer. Low-cost and low-power processors, but whose CPU cores are very capable and which are based on truly modern elements, both graphically and in multimedia. What give a big boost to machines between 350 and 600 euros.
No need to lie to yourself: the €399 laptop you bought as an emergency repair for the family during the first confinement of 2020 is a wheelbarrow. Bought in a hurry to ensure the lessons of the little ones by videoconference, this machine is already bowing out. If the screen of this (15?) inches was just passable, its processor and the components which surround it were already exceeded during its first use. Unfortunately, entry-level PCs are too often a hell of low-end components…
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While RAM and storage will see their prices drop in the coming weeks and months, a wind of progress is blowing on entry-level processors from Intel. Because on the sidelines of its traditional horde of (powerful) Core processors of 13e generation laden with very high-frequency cores, Intel took advantage of the start of the year to launch much more modest chips… but whose impact is, in our opinion, much greater for the very general public. And even more importantly.
Faced with the slew of processors that Intel has launched for medium to high-end towers and laptops, we are talking here about four small references: two Intel Processor (don’t laugh, we still make fun of this new name) and two Core i3s, in ascending order of performance, which belong to the Alder Lake-N family (and not Raptor Lake). Four modest chips compared to their big brothers… but which have promises of performance gains up their sleeves that are out of all proportion to what the Core i5/i7 have between them.
Gracemont: small but strong CPU cores
No more high-performance ‘P’-rated cores in these four entry-level processors. Intel has quite logically reserved its large cores (they take up a lot of surface area on a chip) “Raptor-cove” for its more expensive chips. But the CPU cores integrated in these Core i3 and Intel Inside are indeed the same “E” cores as those of their big brothers. So-called “efficient” cores (efficient) and therefore consume less energy. From their code name “Gracemont”, they are however not penguins since they would have, according to the statements of Intel, ” the same level of performance as 6 Skylake corese generation “, the CPU cores of the high-end PCs of 2015. It is certainly far, but not only the performances were good, but especially at the time no portable processor exceeded 4 physical cores (8 logical cores). The presence of eight physical cores in the Core i3s (which have proven themselves in the 12th and 13th generation Cores) gives hope for very good performance in classic tasks.
To highlight the improvement in performance over the previous generation, Intel used the Pentium Silver N6000 as the benchmark. A Jasper Lake generation chip (2021) which is being pulverized by newcomers: the Core i3-N305 would be almost x2 times more efficient in CPU power and x2.5 more efficient in the graphics field! If it should be remembered that the Pentium Silver N6000 is not a thunderbolt, this CPU manages to run Windows. The extra performance gives us hope for an experience (finally!) devoid of the slowdowns that Intel’s entry-level processors have been dragging for a long time.
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And in addition to these performances equivalent to the old 6th generation Intel flagships – even superior for the Core i3 (eight physical cores, boost frequencies, optimized architecture, etc.) – the four new chips have two weight advantages over their ancestors : their energy consumption and their multimedia engine.
Minimum power consumption, AV1 video decoding
All of these chips are etched in the process called Intel 7. A preceded 10nm with a high transistor density that equals (in this area) that of TSMC’s 7nm – hence the name. Besides, Intel’s 14 nm process from 2015 is much less energy efficient, as it is much older. If we consider that Gracemont cores are effectively equivalent to Skylake 6e generation, the chip that comes closest to the Core i3 N300 is the Core i7-6920-HQ, the most powerful portable chip of the time! Four physical cores (and therefore 8 tasks thanks to multithreading) and a turbo speed of 3.8 GHz. A chip whose TDP fluctuated between 35 and 45 W, while the Core i3-N300 and N305 displayed 7 W and 15 W respectively. times lower. Do not expect quintupled effective autonomy, however. Apart from the fact that the processor is not the only energy-consuming element, entry-level PCs rarely have super batteries. But we are however entitled to expect PCs that do not heat up, and are completely silent. The Core i3 seems so interesting to us that it could even be integrated into more ambitious chassis.
Another strength of this new generation of chips: the multimedia coprocessor, this specialized part of the CPU which takes care of the encoding and decoding of videos. It should be remembered here that if a generic central processor (CPU) can theoretically “rawly” decode any video stream, it does so inefficiently. This is why engineers design specialized bricks in this area, and allocate them a few mm² in the chips, which are certainly not versatile, but which are very (very!) effective in video. This frees up processor cores and consumes only a small fraction of power.
For the first time, Intel has downgraded its most modern multimedia engine into such inexpensive chips. Which means that the four chips we are talking about hardware decode not only the famous h.264 and h.265 (or HEVC), but also the brand new AV1 codec. More efficient than the two previous codecs mentioned, this codec is used by Netflix or YouTube to limit the use of bandwidth, but has the drawback of requiring additional power for decoding… or a recent multimedia engine. And luckily, Intel has one up its sleeve.
More powerful GPU and pre-plugged Wi-Fi 6E
Alongside the CPU cores, Intel has (again) integrated its Xe graphics (GPU) cores for the first time. Yes, the very one that powers its dedicated graphics cards – but with fewer cores, lower frequencies, etc. You can read not only our articles on architectures on GPU technologies, but also those dedicated to the products in which we have already put the GPU Xe to the test. You will discover that the most powerful Core i5 and i7 equipped with 96 execution units (called EU) can run 3D games more or less comfortably, even the most recent ones.
With only 32 EUs clocked at 1.25 GHz, or even only 24 EUs at 750 MHz for the small N200, none of our chips can claim the same performance as these more high-end processors. This is all the more so since the graphics bus is limited to 64bit and the memory used is drawn from RAM (slower process than dedicated graphics memory). But we will already have enough to take advantage of a more modern hardware 3D acceleration, whether for filters in PowerPoint or to launch some independent games like Hades and others Dead Cells.
Other elements of modernity, support for WiFi 6E (latest standard to date), the latest webcam interfaces or even hardware noise reduction. Refinements that only high-end chips have benefited from so far, and which will offer (almost) the same level of comfort during videoconferences as that of more expensive PCs… Almost, because there are obviously still many advantages to premium chips. Even if the entry-level segment is growing at Intel… and at AMD.
AMD also responds
AMD, Intel’s competitor that has long lived in the shadow of the world number 1 in the mobile segment, has finally broken into the high-end world… while continuing to occupy its dominant position in the entry-level . Inventor of APUs – PC processors that integrate a graphics chip – and long excluded from laptops premium before the Zen architecture, AMD continues its work in budget PCs. It also pushes new technologies. In addition to Zen 2 cores, AMD ended up integrating its new multimedia engine, its RDNA2 graphics cores into inexpensive chips. But, like Intel, AMD limits the number of GPU cores as much for cost reasons as to avoid cannibalizing sales of more premium models.
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There must indeed remain an interest in buying a Core i5/i7 or a Ryzen 5/7. And the interest is still there: the more high-end chips are still much more efficient. Whether in program launch speed (more powerful cores), multitasking (more cores), 3D applications or games (integrated graphics chips, RDNA or Xe) or connectivity (Thunderbolt 4, USB 4) . But there’s no denying that new chips from AMD – and now Intel – might just be the upgrade that elevates low-end PCs from “frustrating trowels” to machines (really). sufficient for everyday (comfortable) use. And in these difficult economic times, we can only rejoice in such a technical advance which will benefit the least well-stocked purses.
